Capitalism run wild: Zizou Corder`s lion boy and Victor Kelleher`s dog boy

While capitalism has long made highly efficient ideological use of Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' principle to justify ruthless business practices, this appropriation of animal metaphor has taken on new and considerably more problematic resonances in the wake of globalization. At a time when the negative consequences of corporate greed are becoming more apparent, as inequalities widen and power is shifted beyond governments and their borders, there is a spate of children's novels that explicitly challenges this new world order.

University planning and design under confucianism, colonialism, communism and capitalism : the Vietnamese experience

The university in Vietnam represents a thread of continuity that has managed to survive the political, economic and social turmoil faced so frequently by the Vietnamese people. This paper traces the evolution of the Vietnamese university in terms of its site planning and building design from the Hanoi Van Mieu, a Confucian 'temple of literature' which, built in 1070AD, is regarded as the country's first university, to today’s system of general and specialised universities and polytechnic institutions. In the late 1990s another step in the process of evolution began with the rationalization and amalgamation of the tertiary system to form two large, multi-campus and multi-disciplinary universities – the Hanoi National University and the Ho Chi Minh National University.

New work ethics? Foucault and the spirit of 21st century capitalism

In a corporate environment that is changing at warp speed, performing consistently at high levels is more difficult and more necessary than ever. Narrow interventions simply aren't sufficient anymore. Companies can't afford to address their employees' cognitive capacities while ignoring their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. On the playing field or in the boardroom, high performance depends on how much people renew and recover energy as on how they expend it, on how they manage their lives as much as on how they manage their work. When people feel strong and resilient - physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually - they perform better, with more passion, for longer. They win, their families win, and the corporations that employ them win. (Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz (2001) The Making of a Corporate Athlete, p.128)

Dystopian visions of global capitalism : Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines and M. T. Anderson's Feed

This article examines Philip Reeve’s novel for children, Mortal Engines, and M.T. Anderson’s young adult novel, Feed, by assessing these dystopias as prototypical texts of what Ulrich Beck calls risk society. Through their visions of a fictional future, the two narratives explore the hazards created by contemporary techno-economic progress, predatory global politics and capitalist excesses of consumption. They implicitly pose the question: “In the absence of a happy ending for western civilisation, what kind of children can survive in dystopia?”

Capitalism's new handmaiden : the biotechnical world negotiated through children's fiction

In an era when the merger between capitalism and science becomes an accepted norm, new questions need to be asked about the ethical implications of scientific practices. One such practice is organ transplantation. However, potent debates surround the just distribution and ethical implications of organ transplantation. This paper examines the ways in which children are socialised through children’s literature to accept or challenge the dominant ideologies underpinning organ transplantation. It argues that how subjectivity is constructed informs understandings of agency, and this in turn can deliver new approaches to concerns about scientific practices.

Corporate sustainability : greenwash or a path to sustainable capitalism?

The problems of unsustainable development and the increased-awareness of corporate power in the global era have contributed to an agenda of corporate citizenship. This thesis explores the meanings and practices that fall under the banner of the triple bottom line of corporate citizenship through forty-two in-depth interviews with representatives from the corporate sector and NGO sector (including trade unions) in Australia. This purposive sample includes a specific range of corporate industries and NGO types, all of which have involvement with various areas of sustainability. Interviewees described their feelings and experiences in relation to the concept of the triple bottom line, the potential and limitations of this type of sustainability and the purpose and impacts of partnerships between NGOs and the corporate sector. On the basis of this research, this thesis argues that corporate citizenship is at best, a set of initiatives for making minor adjustments to the way companies perform their day-to-day operations and at worst, a program for improving corporate image rather than performance and for shifting the agenda of sustainable development toward corporate interests. While radical steps are required to achieve a sustainable society and environment, the terms of corporate citizenship offer very limited opportunities for change. The self-regulatory and market based model of citizenship does not challenge the impact of consumerism or the legitimacy of particular industry types and their products, except where threats are perceived to the longevity of the companies involved. Furthermore, while the exploitation of the environment and society has occurred as a result of corporate self-interest, corporate citizenship is justified on the same basis. The self-interest rationale and the tyranny of the economic bottom line in particular, substantially limit the fields of responsibility that can be included in the citizenship paradigm. While there are undoubtedly some well-intentioned corporate representatives who are working toward attaining a more sustainable corporate culture, the discourse is primarily used to shift the sustainable development agenda toward corporate paradigms and interests.

Harm reduction as anarchist practice : a user’s guide to capitalism and addiction in North America

In spite of its origins as an illegal, clandestine, grassroots activity that took place either outside or in defiant opposition to state and legal authority, there is growing evidence to suggest that harm reduction in North America has become sanitized and depoliticized in its institutionalization as public health policy. Harm reduction remains the most contested and controversial aspect of drug policy on both sides of the Canada–US border, yet the institutionalization of harm reduction in each national context demonstrates a series of stark contrasts. Drawing from regional case study examples in Canada and the US, this article historically traces and politically re-maps the uneasy relationship between the autonomous political origins of harm reduction, contemporary public health policy, and the adoption of the biomedical model for addiction research and treatment in North America. Situated within a broader theoretical interrogation of the etiology of addiction, this study culminates in a politically engaged critique of traditional addiction research and drug/service user autonomy. Arguing that the founding philosophy and spirit of the harm reduction movement represents a fundamentally anarchist-inspired form of practice, this article concludes by considering tactics for reclaiming and re-politicizing the future of harm reduction in North America.

Towards a socioanalysis of money, finance and capitalism : beneath the surface of the finance industry

Book launch speech 28 March 2012, Melbourne